Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Menu for 02/23/2011 - Reheating My Grassfed Beef (Dude1)

Tonight was leftovers using the red meat we cooked while Dude2 was out here visiting. By the way, I obviously need to take more time with my food photography because the above picture does not look all that appetizing. Believe me, it was quite good. Anyhow, the trick for me was to reheat the rare ribeye that Dude2 cooked without making it tough and turning it into a medium cooked streak. Obviously, microwaves are a big no, no and I don't usually have luck reheating in a toaster oven either. Continue reading for how I successfuly reheated the rare steak, tips on homemade sourdough bread, and my sauteed zucchini.

We exclusively eat my homemade sourdough bread in our house. I haven't bought bread since I started making my own. Sourdough is extremely cheap to make and has numerous health benefits over standard bread (even whole wheat). I'm not going to go into the complete process for making sourdough in this post (sorry). I did, however, want to recommend if you haven't already tried it, to top your dough with raw unfiltered extra virgin olive oil (that's a mouth full), sea salt, and dried rosemarry.

You house will smell of complete awesomeness while this bakes! Another tip I got from Dude2 was to steam the bread for the first 10 - 12 minutes of baking. The steam prevents the outer crust from turning hard too quickly in the oven and restricting the center of the dough from rising. It also gives the bread a nicer golden look when done. I steam my bread by trapping the bread's own moisture in by covering it with a solid stainless steel mixing bowl. I bake my bread at 450 degrees on a large stone.

I uncovered the bread after about 12 minutes and let it finish baking for another 20 minutes. The results are below. I served it tonight with grassfed pastured butter.

For the veggie tonight I sauteed sliced organic zucchini. I cooked it in about 2 Tbl grassfed pastured butter and added sea salt, fresh ground pepper, and fresh grated parmesan. I obviously like this combination as I used it on my potatoes as well the last couple of nights.

I decided to reheat the steak in the leftover sauce of the gypsy pot roast. I had a bit of the roast I reheated as well. Cooking the steak in the sauce reheated it slowly and did not cook it past it's original state of rare.

One thing that I did notice was that the smokiness of the cherry wood we used on my grill came through even more with the leftovers of this steak. Also, the nice crust on the steak from the high-heat searing the night before, did not allow much of the sauce flavor into the steak. I was actually glad about this since my sauce had too much cayenne. This steak was awesome and the first time I've had leftover steak that was just a good as the first night! Thanks Dude2!